Wow! I can't believe it's been a month and a half since my last post! Been busy with the camper, the other camper, kids and life. "So, how's the Shasta coming along?" you ask. Well, GREAT! So far, so good!
Hubby has mostly finished the kitchenette. Still need to put in the countertop once it's been painted and then we need to put in the sink. We decided due to time constraints to put in a temporary countertop for now. We'll use a stainless steel bar sink for the time being, so that we can take our time making the trim for the original sink. We'll do the laminate countertop later, and also the tables. Probably over the winter, when hubby's workshop is lacking for work. haha. Somewhere between Christmas and March, I think.
I am THRILLED to finally have pulled out our old popup to get it ready to sell. It's been sitting behind the Shasta, neglected and forlorn. We opened her up yesterday to check everything over, and she's going on Craigslist tomorrow. Hopefully we can find a new family to love her soon.
It's very strange to be inside the popup now that we've spent so much time on the Shasta. Even though the Shasta is technically smaller than the popup, the Shasta seems MUCH bigger. The Shasta is narrower than the popup by almost a foot. The ceiling height is also a few inches lower than the popup. The Shasta doesn't have two expanded ends, either. I think maybe the reason it FEELS bigger is because the walls are a solid material and there is so much floor space at the moment. My sweet Hubby reminded me that the Shasta is going to get "really small" once the dinette and gaucho are made into beds and there are 4 people inside. Hee hee. I'm sure he's right!!
I am also very pleased at how much storage space our Shasta has. I emptied everything from the popup and put it into the Shasta, and I still have plenty of room for more blankets, our clothes, the kids' water toys and lots of other things we might want to bring along. I put the utensils away in a drawer, the dish towels in another, wraps and bags in another, then used the last drawer for a "junk drawer" with odd bits of things we need - like clothespins, flashlights, bug spray and bandaids.
I still have a WHOLE cupboard for our bath items and another for our FOOD!!! And a bookshelf!! And there's only 2 pillows in one of the dinette benches. Ooh LA LA!! What LUXURY!!
Seriously, when taking a trip in the popup, it's like a finely tuned dance. First, we open the camper and load the sand toys, linens, lawn chairs and boogie boards. Then, we close it up and load everything else in the van. Our clothes, a basket of food, the cooler, extra shoes, the kids. Pool noodles, whatever else we might remember at the last minute goes into the van willy nilly. We get to our campsite, and then we have to level the camper, move the van, open the camper, unload the previously mentioned toys, lawn chairs and boogie boards, flip up the sink, hook up the wire shelving on the bunk ends and over the kitchen, make up the dinette, take the stovetop outside and attach it to the side of the camper, then unload the van into the camper and put everything away where it belongs. Are you tired yet? That's the reason why we haven't done many trips that are less than a week. The setup and tear down times are ridiculous!! It can take us up to 2 hours on each end of the trip, let alone driving and keeping 2 cranky kids out of trouble.
That was the impetus in looking for a travel trailer for our family. That, and the fact that we think old stuff is just nifty. Yeah, now that we're over the hump of getting this trailer ready to go, I think we can call it "nifty" and get excited again.
Photos to come.....
